


Season of the Witch(es)

by acareeroutofrobbingbanks



Category: Fall Out Boy, Halloweentown (1998)
Genre: Halloween, Halloweentown crossever? in my fob fandom? it's more likely than you think, M/M, Witches, fluff with plot, it's only teen for language, just a lot of love for halloween, trick-or-pete
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 05:37:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21265928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acareeroutofrobbingbanks/pseuds/acareeroutofrobbingbanks
Summary: “Patrick, do you know how the portals between our worlds were opened full time in the first place?” Kalabar asked.“Well, I only found out Halloweentown existed like, max twelve hours ago, so obviously not,” Patrick said, rolling his eyes. “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”Patrick gets a little too drunk at a Halloween party and stumbles into another dimension, as you do. The good news is that there's a very cute warlock by the name of Pete who's there to catch him when he falls. The bad news is that Pete's got a complicated family history and thinks Patrick is someone he's not. Shenanigans ensue.





	Season of the Witch(es)

Later, Patrick would swear he had no idea how he got on the wrong bus that fateful night. The truth, however, was that he was a little high and a lot drunk when he stumbled out of Jon’s Halloween party, and at the time, he considered himself lucky it wasn’t a stranger’s car.

The party had been a disaster, that was for sure. It was a costume party, according to the Facebook description, but Patrick was one of seven (7) people who had shown up in costume. He’d gone all out, too, with a pointed witch’s hat that added two feet of height onto him, on top of the inches bought by his stacked and buckled boots that looked like something pirates would wear, if pirates were going to discos and drag shows in the late 1980’s. His outfit was mostly big, flowing, emerald green robes, patterned with glittery silver stars and crescent moons. He was shiny and gaudy and visible from a few city blocks away. He was ridiculously proud of the wizard outfit, and then when he walked in the door, everyone was in jeans and t-shirts. To cope with how his bright red cheeks were clashing with the green of his robes, Patrick drank.

And he drank, and drank, and drank.

Adam was the bartender behind the plastic, fold-out card table. There were PBRs, Bloody Marys served in glasses with mirrors affixed to their bottoms, and candy corn cocktails that Adam swore would get Patrick “absolutely sloshed.” Patrick loved candy corn, and the cocktail managed to taste exactly like it, all food dye and honey on his tongue, so Patrick had quite a few. 

The whole house (out in Evanston, Patrick couldn’t believe he’d gone out to fucking Evanston for a party this lame) smelled like All Hash-low’s Eve, a strain of weed Patrick only ever smelled at the end of October. Patrick had never liked smoking, as it seemed to make his very lungs itch and he was left coughing and red-eyed for days after. He didn’t mind this strain, though. He didn’t smoke it himself, but he liked the almost pumpkin pie smell of the smoke as the clouds of it blossomed all over the house. He didn’t know that weed could smell good at all, much less like the essence of Halloween. He suspected the dealer was Joe, the weird kid who had gone to high school with Patrick for only one year, didn’t get any pop culture references, and was always nervously tousling his thick mane of hair with one hand. 

Joe was at the party, one of the few other people in costume, and he looked perfectly at ease. He waved when he saw Patrick, and Patrick thought about going over to him to say hi, then ended up staying fixed to the wall. Waste of time, he thought to himself. The whole party was a waste of time, except for the candy corn cocktails. 

“Cool costume, dude,” Jon said. His eyes had gone all the way glassy, the orange and black Solo cup in his hand held at a precarious angle, and his one costume based concession was a hot-pink feather boa draped around his shoulders. “Who are you going as?”

“I’m- I’m a witch,” Patrick said, trying not to sound as drunk and miserable as he was. “You?”

“Oh, I’m John Lennon,” Jon said. He glanced down, as though he hadn’t actually noticed what he was wearing yet. “...in a feather boa.”

Patrick glanced down. On second glance, Jon was, in fact, wearing the “New York City” shirt that John Lennon was known for. Patrick sighed.

“Great party, man,” he said bracingly. Jon gave him a dopey smile, and Patrick decided, even though it wasn’t yet ten at night. The wilted orange streamers and seventh “Thriller” remix in a row wasn’t doing anything for Patrick’s holiday spirit. If anything, it was just making him depressed.

It was not until Patrick stumbled out into the cool night air, tripping over his stupid platform boots, that he realized he was a lot drunker than he thought he was. He crossed his arms as he stumbled away from the house and tried not to cry. It would be stupid to cry, he told himself, because nothing was wrong, nothing except the fact that he loved Halloween and here he was, on the best night of the year, feeling empty inside.

The magic of Christmas had faded when he grew up - of course it did, that was expected. But Halloween was always meant to be special, was meant to be the flame burning in the pit of Patrick’s heart like a candle in a Jack O’Lantern. 

It was a holiday that was important, not just another chance for people to drink and mingle, bastardized like St. Patrick’s Day or New Years Eve to nothing but themed cocktails and a color scheme.

It was definitely stupid, Patrick decided as he kicked pebbles down into the gutter. And he was definitely drunk.

But it was fine, Patrick told himself. He swiped at his eyes with the stupidly silky robes and balanced himself on his stupid shoes and stomped his way over to the slightly blurry bus stop sign. He would go back to his apartment in the city and would eat popcorn and pumpkin cookies and watch Michael Meyers try to murder Jamie Lee Curtis and it would be good enough. It was just one night, after all. 

The bus pulled up with a screech like an angry cat, and Patrick mounted the steep, angular stairs. He waved his Ventra card vaguely over where the censor should be and collapsed in an orange seat, still unable to see through his blurry eyes. He blinked until he could see straight again, and started to take in the occupants of the bus. _They _were all in Halloween costumes, and elaborate ones at that. 

"Anyone know if more's comin'?" the driver called. "Next bus inbound isn't coming for an hour."

"Get a move on!" a man in a very lifelike werewolf costume growled.

"I need to go feed my kids!" said a waiflike woman in black, her face hidden behind a veil.

The driver, for his part, shrugged, and pulled an enormous accordion lever that slammed the doors shut. Patrick thought even then that it was a lot of fuss for a single stop, and in any case, there was a bus from Evanston all the way downtown every fifteen minutes on weeknights. Maybe they were running holiday hours?

He leaned back, the drink and hash really making him feel quite dizzy. He thought about perhaps napping for a bit, certain he would wake up when they hit the jarring inner city traffic. He had just settled back and closed his eyes when the bus lurched forward and sputtered. A smell of thick woodsmoke poured over Patrick, and as he opened his eyes to see what the hell was going on, the bus moved forward and _up_.

Patrick opened his mouth to scream, but his breath caught for a moment. Long enough for him to look around and realize that everyone else was treating this like a totally normal bus ride. A girl with enormous, glimmering wings flipped a page in her book, squinting at the letters in front of her. A man dressed like an ogre (who must have been covered in prosthetics, Patrick thought, that was no cheap mask he was wearing) was snoring where he leaned on the window. Every single immaculately costumed individual on the bus was yawning through the bus _taking fucking flight_ like it was an everyday occurence. 

Patrick pondered this for a second, trying to wrap his drunk, contact-high brain around what was going on. Then he swallowed his scream, leaned back in the seat, and decided that he had definitely been drugged, whether accidentally or on purpose, he couldn’t say, and he probably just ought to wait out the hallucination until he could get home. He would drink a big glass of water, eat an entire loaf of bread, food absorbed roofies, right? and then sleep till December. 

While the stars flashed by through the window, galactic swirls that Patrick couldn’t recognize and had never seen so clearly this close to Chicago, Patrick wondered about the drugs. Did everyone get completely smashed at the party? Or had someone drugged Patrick in particular? He knew he should be freaked out, but he almost felt flattered. He didn’t hear any names of stops being called, though, and that concerned him a little. If he rode the bus to the end of the line, would the driver call Patrick's mom for him like a kid lost on the backseat of a school bus? 

All at once the bus screeched to a halt. Patrick flew forward in his seat and slammed head first into the broad shoulders of the man in front of him. The man, in an elaborate and lifelike gray-green ogre costume scowled at him, his whole rubber mask (it had to be a mask, the way his face was shaped, right?) twisted in disdain.

"Watch it, warlock," he grunted with a voice like an avalanche of boulders. Patrick made a high, assenting noise in the back of his throat and nodded so vigorously that his hat tipped, leaning sideways and jaunty atop his head. With a great deal more restraint than Patrick usually had when he was high, he did not say "What the holy fuck?" in response to the man's absolutely insane costume. 

Patrick had sat back in his seat to get as far away from the thickset man and his scary costume as possible, and so for a moment he didn’t notice that everyone around him was already standing up. All of the elaborately costumed goblins, ghouls, vampires and pumpkinheaded creatures were filing off the bus, and the driver shouted back: "End of the line! Everybody wake up, we're here! Halloweentown, boys and ghouls!"

Patrick's first thought was that "Halloweentown" was a pretty lame name for some Halloween attraction, and he wondered how he'd ended up on a shuttle bus out to it (it had to be just a weird shuttle bus after all this wasn't Harry Potter buses couldn't _fly_). But, mid wondering, he glanced out the window and saw that it was daytime. Sun was streaming in through the dusty bus windows, a crisp and buttery gold, the way the sun only shone in late October. And, before Patrick was over his absolute shock at the fact that somehow ten at night had become high noon, he realized that it was definitely not Chicago outside of the window. The bus was parked in front of the biggest jack o'lantern Patrick had ever seen, and behind it rose the quaint, two-story brick buildings that spoke of small towns south of Kankakee. Toto, we are not in Cook County anymore.

But this Patrick rationalized as probably okay. So, the bus hadn't flown, he had just fallen asleep. He'd called asleep and had a weird, trippy dream, and he'd woken up the next day in small-town, Midwestern somewhere, some place where they really loved Halloween and celebrated with a big festival… on November first, for some reason. Sure. Why not. 

"Hey, buddy?" the girl behind him had a sweet, high voice, pale green skin that looked very dewy for makeup, and glittering wings that actually fluttered behind her. They must have cost a fortune to animate like that, and they were totally soundless. Patrick was still staring at them, gape-mouthed, while she went on. "You have to get off here. Are you all right?"

"Fine," Patrick said blankly. "Fine, but- I think I might've missed my stop?"

He was dimly aware that he sounded drunk, because he was drunk. The girl in the picture costume laughed, and offered him a glimmering green arm.

"C'mon," she said. "I'm sure you'll be able to find your way home once we get you outside. Sunshine helps. And those mortal drinks can really do a number on you, I know."

Patrick meant to ask her what a mortal drink was, but then she was tugging him off the bus and it took all his concentration not to stumble over his stacked boots and long robes. It wasn't the ideal outfit to be drunk in, he realized. The bus felt wavy and uneven, but he couldn’t tell if that was a quirk of the floor of the vehicle, or just regular drunkenness. The pixie-girl giggled along with him, and Patrick realized that she was also probably drunk. This made him delighted for some reason, and he laughed only a little hysterically as she pulled him out of the bus and into the bright sunshine.

Patrick was definitely not in Chicago. The quaint town he was standing in the center of was decidedly anachronistic: it was all little red brick buildings, spindly steeples and clock towers, but short little buildings under the steeples. The square was full of cars from every era, like there was a car show in town, but there was also a horse drawn carriage pulled up behind a line of bulbous cabs. Kids in elf costumes roller skated by, and every little municipal pocket of green was overflowing with bushy plants, some of which had orange flowers that glowed like flames. The trees were all full of bright red and yellow leaves, but there were plenty of leaves on the ground too, dry and ripe for crunching underfoot. The streets themselves appeared to be cobbled together, and most of the people walking by were wearing long, flowing robes like Patrick. 

All of the people walking by were in Halloween costumes. None of them were going as sexy nuns or Batman, either, but were wearing beautifully embroidered witch’s hats or had long, jagged fangs and widows peaks that appeared to be their real hair. There were ogres and swamp creatures, ghosts and goblins, fairies and, behind the wheel of one of the taxis, a skeleton. 

And, oh, that threw Patrick for a fucking loop, it sure did, because that was a fucking skeleton. That person hadn’t painted their neck black, there was simply no neck but the spine that ran from skull to ribs, oh god, that wasn’t possible, that _wasn’t fucking possible_, and Patrick had never, ever taken something that made him trip, he didn’t take hallucinogenics, but he was clearly very, very high, because what else could explain the actual, literal skeleton driving a fucking taxi?

Patrick stumbled behind the bus and threw up into one of the beautiful, glowing bushes, legs quivering unsteadily in his stupid, high heeled boots. He tried to stand up, and this time found that he couldn’t regain his balance, and he fell to the side, gasping in pain when he discovered that, hey, these super pretty bushes have _thorns_.

He reached for his cell phone in the deep, hand-sewn pockets of his robes and found only his wallet, and then he started to cry.

Patrick was so fucking high and still very drunk, sick to his stomach, lost in a town maybe a day after his last solid memory, no one he knew, no idea where he was, and with no cell phone. It felt like as good a time as any to give up and cry. Also, Patrick was a big-time drunk crier. 

He let himself fall apart for a minute, then sniffed, wiped his nose and eyes with the enormous sleeve of his robes, and tried to pull himself to his feet. It was rough, though, getting off the ground in heels. He’d never had to try before, and it was harder than any of his exes made it look.

“You need a hand, there?”

Patrick looked up and blinked in the too-bright sunlight. Jesus, but if he stayed out much longer he was going to sober up and get hungover, which wasn’t something he was especially looking forward to. His vision adjusted after a moment, and he saw an absolutely gorgeous boy with a big, toothy grin looking down at him.

“You okay?” the guy asked. He was wearing a dumb witch’s outfit, like Patrick, although his robes were more subdued, royal blue with dark gray lining. He had hair the precise color of spilled ink, and from under the bells of his enormous sleeves, Patrick could see tattoos swirling their way up his arms. He was hot, and Patrick was just drunk enough that he could stare gape-mouthed at a guy like him for hours if he didn’t concentrate.

“Uh,” said Patrick, and he swallowed hard to steady his voice and wet his mouth, to lend himself volume again. Damned, cotton-mouthed hangover. “Uh, yeah, I’m just- these shoes were a really stupid idea, and-”

“All good,” the guy said. He leaned over and took Patrick’s hand - his hand was rough and warm like he’d just been holding his hands out in front of a bonfire - and yanked him to his feet. It looked effortless, and though Patrick didn’t really like to be the damsel in distress, as he stumbled forward and fell right into this dude’s lean, muscular arms, he thought that his night (or possibly new day) was already improving immensely. 

“Whoa, there,” the guy said. “Have a few too many mortal drinks?” He smiled at Patrick, which was not doing anything for the strength in Patrick’s knees. God, he had a bright white smile. But-

“What’s a mortal drink?” Patrick asked, focusing hard on not slurring. “The other girl - she mentioned mortal drinks too?”

“Didn’t you just come from the mortal world?” the guy asked. “Sorry, I guess I just assumed you came on the bus, but then, if you’re a warlock, I guess you wouldn’t, right? Oh well, ignore me. I jump to conclusions way too fast and - sorry, I’m being super rude. I’m Pete.”

“Hi, Pete,” Patrick said. “I’m, uh, Patrick? And I’m probably gonna act kinda ditzy too, for now. I’m having a very weird night. Day. Whatever.”

“Hey, no worries,” Pete said. “Are you new in town? I haven’t seen you around here before?”

“Very new,” Patrick said. “And, um, God, this is gonna sound so stupid, but I kinda just… ended up here, so where exactly… is… here?”

Pete beamed at him once again, then, once he was sure Patrick was standing upright and not wavering, he spread his arms wide. 

“Halloweentown!” he said. “The one and only.”

“Halloweentown?” Patrick repeated. “What, is this like Santa Claus, Indiana? Like, you just happen to have that name and you go all out on theming once a year?”

“It’s just Halloweentown,” Pete said. “But yeah, I guess we kind of lean into it on the day of. Extra jack o’lanterns, paint the town orange, all that stuff. What, don’t they do that where you’re from?”

“Not as much as I’d like,” Patrick said. Then he winced rather dramatically. He had scraped up his hands on the thorny bushes, and he realized as he tried to stick them in his pockets that his wrist had been cut and was now bleeding profusely. He made a face and started to twist his sleeve around his wrist when Pete caught his arm.

“Jeez, that looks bad,” Pete said. His eyebrows were furrowed over his eyes, and it was distracting enough that Patrick was no longer looking at his wrist. Oh, he didn’t believe in love at first sight, and yet. Pete gently turned his arm over, inspected it, and then pressed Patrick’s arm back into his chest, keeping the wound just above Patrick’s heart. “Keep that elevated, and I’ll take you back to my place, yeah? I can wrap that up for you and you can tell me all about how they do Halloween where you’re from.”

And, because Patrick was injured and drunk and high and dazed by the pretty boy in the pretty costume, he nodded and said: “Okay.”

***

Pete didn’t appear to own a car, and to Patrick’s immense relief, he didn’t grab one of the cabs either. Patrick was sure he would lose his head completely if he got into a car with a fucking skeleton behind the wheel, so it was really better for both of them that Pete said “It’s not far, mind if we walk?” before leading him down a sidewalk. 

Of course, the town was beautiful, there was no denying that. Filled with flowers and swirling autumn leaves, the cobblestone streets were all picturesque. It looked like a fantasy town, something in a story book. There were a very few cars on the street, but mostly it was bustling with people, all in gem-colored robes and funny facepaint (Patrick kept telling himself it was facepaint, because it was, after all, Halloween.) Little stalls were perched on the edges of the sidewalk selling wares like flowers, pumpkins, little bottles full of liquid labeled “Potions” in emerald green scrawl on the sign above that particular stand. Patrick wanted to stop and see everything, but he was also still terribly afraid of this hallucination world, and he didn’t want to stray too far from Pete’s side. Plus, it was hard to be distracted by any one thing for too long, as Pete kept up a running commentary while they walked.

“You picked a pretty good day to come, obviously, but it’ll get busier later on. Lots of people went over to the mortal world to go to parties, because even though they can go whenever these days, a lot of people still go on Halloween for tradition’s sake. So, some of the hottest hangouts aren’t too crowded right now. The ice cream in that place is spectacular, top notch pumpkin, and oh! if you wanna do any shopping for personal transportation, the brooms there are kind of expensive, but they all fly like dreams. None of that old time-y, rustic stuff that looks like it’s made from cinnamon and garden twigs, not here. My family lives up at the top of the hill over there - that one, see? Kinda hilly country, but you get your exercise in. The gym is a total rip-off, mostly just aerobics classes, and I prefer to be outside when I work out anyway. But I guess you probably won’t be here long enough to worry about that. I hate working out on vacation, don’t you? But how long are you here for, anyway?”

“I… I don’t know,” Patrick said. Pete was a very fast talker, and it was a little overwhelming. 

“Spontaneous, I like it!” Pete said. “And where was it you said you were from?”

“I didn’t,” Patrick said. He wondered if this was like the Halloween Town in _The Nightmare Before Christmas_. Should he say “Christmas Town”? “Easter Town”? Patrick really couldn’t remember all the different doors on the trees. Or maybe he was just being a jackass, and this wasn’t some weird storybook character walking next to him. Maybe Halloweentown was a real place, and Patrick had really fallen asleep on the bus and woken up in the most enthusiastically festive town in the country. 

“Ooh, can I guess?” Pete asked. He stepped in front of Patrick on the sidewalk, cutting him off, and looked him up and down. He bit his lip (God, his lips looked soft) and squinted, looking Patrick up and down with a seering gaze. 

“I don’t think you’d dress like that if you were from Villa de los Muertos,” Pete said. “Maybe Samhainburg?”

“Nope,” Patrick said. There definitely was no magical tree in _The Nightmare Before Christmas _that led to a place called _Samhainburg_, but none of those sounded like real places either. “I’m from Chicago.”

Pete frowned at him.

“Shi- what now?”

“Chicago,” Patrick said. 

“Huh,” said Pete. “Never heard of it. What’s it like there?”

“Crowded,” said Patrick. “Kinda bad smelling, but whatever you’re looking for, you can find it there, any hour of the night or day. And there’s lots of people, so you’ll always find someone when you don’t want to be alone.”

“What about when you do want to be alone?” Pete asked. 

“You visit your parents in the suburbs?” Patrick said. It was a joke, but Pete wrinkled up his nose like he didn’t get it.

“Suburbs?” he asked. 

“Yeah, like, the towns outside of big cities. Like this but… uglier.”

“You’re not selling me on alone time in the suburbs, Patrick.”  
“Yeah, well, I can’t recommend it.”

Pete beamed at him with his too bright smile, then locked his arm in Patrick’s and continued leading him down the sidewalks. 

“C’mon,” he said. “I’ll take you back for ice cream later, if you want, but we really ought to get that wrist of yours looked at.”

And Patrick was all too willing to follow him. 

It was a fair bit of walking to get out of the commercial district of Halloweentown, and then a steep uphill walk to get to Pete’s house. Patrick wasn’t really used to hills, and he was embarrassingly out of breath by the time they reached the top of the snaking road that led upwards, but if Pete noticed, he didn’t comment. Patrick was still trying to catch his breath when he looked up and saw the house that was at the end of the road. 

A huge mansion rose up from the top of the hill, its spires twisting dark edges into the clear blue sky. It was all black and gray, with a pillared entrance and a thick, black, iron fence surrounding the immense lawn around it. From the stained glass windows to the thin tower running up its backside, every inch of the place screamed _haunted mansion_ to Patrick, and he couldn’t think of a less fitting place for someone as bouncy and cheerful as Pete to live in. Come to think of it, he couldn’t imagine how someone as young as Pete owned a mansion, but he supposed that there were rich kids everywhere, and it was probably easier to make it rich in some country village than it was in the big city. Patrick promised himself he wouldn’t be rude, but the alcohol he had had earlier seemed to keep his tongue looser than he wanted.

“This is your house?” Patrick asked in obvious disbelief. For the first time since he had met Patrick, Pete looked uncomfortably, shifting where he stood.

“It’s my family’s house,” he said. “My dad’s, I guess. But I still live here.”

“Does your dad?” Patrick asked. Pete looked closed off then, shuttered, and he turned away from Patrick before answering.

“No, not anymore.”

He walked up to the gate (where, Patrick noted, some of the wrought iron had been molded into the shape of anatomical hearts pierced through with thick wooden stakes) and unlocked it, blocking the view of the padlock from Patrick. With a heavy clang, the lock fell away, and the gates creaked open. 

“Right this way,” said Pete with a grand flourish of his arm. Patrick started up the path, and decided that, while the house looked haunted, there was no way his day could possibly get any stranger than it already was. Maybe a cute boy bandaging his wrist in a haunted house would be a nice, normal improvement. 

They crunched up the gravel drive while a few orange and brown leaves skittered around their feet, but the merriness of the town seemed missing here. This house was cold, and even the drive that curled out from it like a plume of smoke was still and silent. 

When they reached the front door, Patrick saw an enormous knocker (also in the shape of a heart) for just a moment before Pete threw the door open and ushered Patrick into a grand entryway, two or three stories tall, lit by an enormous chandelier that hung like so much bright-white fruit. A grand staircase swept through most of the room, red carpeted and plush, and cobwebs hung from the ceilings less like a sign of disrepair and more like a permanent Halloween decoration.

"Wow," said Patrick. "This is quite a place."

He couldn't honestly say he liked the big, baroque house with its molding on the ceiling in the shape of skulls and bones, or the huge black bookcases full of ancient tomes, but it was beautiful in its way. The enormous spider decoration by the foot of the stairs was eerily lifelike, but Patrick wasn't about to let himself get spooked by a half-decorated old house, even if what little sunlight in the home came through filtered weak and gray. 

"My dad used to be the mayor," Pete said, a little embarrassed, like he didn't like grandiose displays of affluence any better than Patrick did. "Come with me - I think we have everything we need to take care of those cuts in my bathroom."

Patrick followed him up the stairs easily enough, led down a massive hallway with big, dark wood beams curving across the ceiling. The place reminded him of a cathedral or a temple, too big and ornate for real people to just _live _in. But then, Pete opened yet another big, intricately carved wooden door, and revealed a bedroom so normal looking that it made Patrick’s head spin.

He supposed it wasn’t exactly normal looking by most standards, but the way Patrick’s night was going, this felt downright homey. All the angles were normal, not crazy, jagged tilts or curves. There was a thick, brocade wallpaper on the walls, but over the top of it were posters for dozens of bands, vinyl stickers, and torn sheets of notebook paper. The four poster bed was blanketed with food and crumpled paper and more general detritus, and in the corner there were a bass guitar and a neon purple broom propped up side by side.

“Your room?” Patrick asked with a teasing smile. Pete, blushing, rolled his eyes like he had made a joke about it.

“I haven’t really redecorated in… ever, so it’s got a lot of teenage remnants,” he said, clearly defensive. “What? I went through a mortal phase.”

“No, it’s cute,” Patrick said, and only after he had said it realized that if this dude wasn’t gay, calling him cute would be deeply off-putting. Patrick had never really spent an extended period of time in a small town, but he heard about how they operated and how they were all stuck in the dark ages and were scared of The Gays. But, rather than looking disgusted, Pete just gave him a shy smile and opened the adjoining door into the bathroom.

It was the sort of bathroom big enough to have furniture in, and there was indeed a little black settee for Patrick to sit down on while Pete pulled long-necked bottles and rotund little jars out of the cabinets. Patrick, suddenly aware that he was in a very stupid situation, glanced down at his wrists. The cuts were shallow, like he would expect of thorns, but he noticed for the first time that his hands were gloved in red. The cuts, shallow as they looked, were still bleeding rapidly, and Patrick felt a little jolt of fear. What if whatever he’d been drugged with (assuming he had been drugged) was also a blood thinner? Would he die of his cut wrists, like the old hemophiliac royalty in Imperial Russia? He’d read about them, and it sounded like an awful way to go.

“Here we are,” Pete said, popping out from under the counter with a smattering of dust graying his hair and a tiny green bottle held triumphantly in his hand. “You don’t get people hurting themselves like that too often, but I always keep something around just in case. Do they have bloodwort bushes where you’re from?”

“What?” Patrick asked blankly.

“Bloodwort,” Pete repeated. In a white basin, he began pouring in splashes of acid green liquid from one bottle and cloudy, teal colored oil from another. “This pretty, ornamental bush with lethal thorns. The mayor says she’ll do something about them, because they’re planted all over town, but she’s got a lot of stuff to worry about, and I guess it’s not that high on her list.”

“Lethal?!” Patrick asked, looking up. His hands felt shaky all of a sudden, but Pete just flashed him a big, bright, white grin.

“Only if untreated,” he promised. He produced a large wooden spoon seemingly from out of nowhere and stirred the mixture in the bowl together, muttering gibberish under his breath. Or possibly Welsh. It was hard for Patrick to tell for sure. After a moment, though, the potion began to spark, and then let out a huge puff of dark blue smoke, the velvety color of a pure night sky. 

Pete knelt down beside Patrick, setting the bowl on the settee, and glanced up at him through thick lashes. Jesus, what a look. Patrick momentarily forgot about the killer bush he had landed in and instead could only think about Pete’s downright intoxicating eyes. Pete took his left hand in his and turned it over gently. Patrick’s skin tingled wherever Pete touched it, and he begged himself to hold it together for just a moment more. 

“This’ll sting,” Pete warned, then he spooned some of the potion over Patrick’s scratches. Patrick gasped aloud - it did sting, but it was somehow a cold sting, like peppermint and ice water stitching his skin back together, and as the mixture trickled off his arm, stained a ghoulish purple by his blood, Patrick could see that his wrist was still bloody, but looked otherwise as though it had never been scratched in the first place.

“Give me your other hand,” Pete demanded, and numbly, Patrick held out his right hand for Pete to do the same with it. Once both arms were stinging brightly but otherwise unharmed, Pete held onto his hands for just a second longer, then dropped them, flushing as he stood up and turned around. He had expressive skin, Patrick thought. He had never met someone who blushed so easily.

“You should wash your hands off,” Pete said, no longer facing him. “Wouldn’t want you to get too much attention from the vampires when you head back into town.”

“Right,” Patrick said faintly. He stood up shakily, cursing his boots yet again as he tried to stand straight and tall next to Pete. He washed his hands in too hot water while Pete put away all his potion ingredients under the sink, and flinched with excitement or nerves whenever Pete brushed up against him. 

"Sorry to have dragged you all the way up here," Pete said. "Those cuts, uh, don't heal right with magic alone."

"It's fine," Patrick said, still completely baffled. He supposed that magic was real, and he also supposed he should take that harder than he was, but having seen all this and still being drunk enough to sway, he could wrap his head around it. Magic was real, sure. Pete did magic. "I'm having fun with you."

"If this is your idea of fun, I'd hate to see what dates look like," Pete said, and snorted. 

“That’s so not what I meant!” Patrick protested. “I just meant that I appreciate getting the chance to get to know you!”

“Yeah?” Pete made a stupid face at Patrick in the huge, silver mirror, waggling his eyebrows in a pantomime of trying to be sexy. Patrick laughed and almost fell right back onto the settee. He caught the counter, and caught Pete’s eyes in the mirror. They were bright, nearly golden, and his cheeks were still flushed, and Patrick was struck by how colorful he was, like the world around him was entirely in black and white and only Pete was in color. The both of them froze, eyes locked in reflection, and Patrick watched Pete’s reflection inhale deeply, his chest rising and falling slowly under his robes.

“So,” Pete said, voice so low that it didn’t break the spell. “Um. Did you still want to-?”

“Pete!” 

Someone with a deep, booming voice called up from the bowels of the house. The word boomed against the walls, and though it was clearly coming from far away, the echo was loud enough to make Patrick jump.

“Shit,” Pete said. He turned away from the mirror at last, their eye contact vanishing all at once, even as he turned to face Patric. “Um. Just wait here, okay?”

“Are you not supposed to have visitors?” Patrick asked.

“No, it’s not that, it’s just-” Pete made a face, unsure of how he was supposed to say whatever it was he was saying. “You wouldn’t like my family.”

“I’ve never even met them,” Patrick said blankly. 

“I know,” Pete said. “Fuck, it’s just. I should have told you, but I saw you and you were cute and I really wanted you to like me, and-! And my name, my last name, is-”

“Pete!” 

Pete and Patrick both jumped as they heard the bedroom door bang open. Pete peered around the doorway first, and Patrick just stood there, dumbly. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to this ambiguous family member he was supposed to hate, the brother or father of the cute wizard boy who had picked him up. 

Jesus, if this all turned out to be real, Patrick was getting married. And if it was a hallucination, he was going back to college to take creative writing classes until he could write it into a fucking book.

“Pete, you didn’t tell me you had company!” the man said. He was handsome, Patrick supposed, or had once been handsome and since had gone to seed. He had the same inky black hair as Pete, though his was longer and hung in loose curls. He had a strong jaw, lined eyes, and skin that was pallid, like fish flesh. He was disconcerting, but he smiled amiably enough at Patrick.

“Dad, this is Patrick,” Pete said, staring directly at his shoes. “He’s visiting town and I offered to show him around. Patrick, this is my dad… Kalabar.”

Even Pete’s father, this Kalabar person, stiffened. The cold flesh of his face went statue still, smiling but empty. Patrick was unnerved by this reaction, to say the least, but he still didn’t know who that was or why his name was, apparently, such a big deal. 

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Kalabar,” Patrick said, sticking out his hand. Kalabar laughed, shook Patrick’s hand briefly, and shook his head.

“Please, just Kalabar,” he said. “And I’m always happy to see another friendly warlock’s face. You must be quite the magician to have caught my Pete’s attention.” He turned to Pete and with only the slightest sternness in his voice, said “You just be sure to keep it down, now. Your brother’s resting.”

“I know,” Pete said quickly. “We weren’t being loud, were we?”

“No, not at all,” Kalabar said. He squeezed Pete’s shoulder with another warm, friendly smile that seemed to only make Pete more miserable. “I just wanted to let you know we’re planning on having dinner at nine sharp. Got that?”

“Got it,” Pete said.

Kalabar was halfway out the door before he called back: “Oh, and Patrick do be sure to come! We could use a bit more magic lightening the place up.”

Pete let out a long, low breath as soon as the door shut again. 

“Thank you,” he said fervently. “For not being weird. I know how it seems, but he’s really not that bad of a guy.”

“I don’t know how it seems,” Patrick said. “He’s just your dad, right? He seems fine.” He seemed a little creepy, but Patrick wasn’t about to tell the hot boy that much. 

“You don’t know him?” Pete asked, looking positively baffled.

“How would I?” Patrick asked. “I just got into town, and I’d never met you before.”

“I just thought he was, well, sort of infamous,” Pete said. 

“I’ve literally never heard of him,” Patrick said. “It’s a cool name, I guess? You kind of psyched me up for nothing, though. Besides, even if I’d heard of him and didn’t like him for, I don’t know, his old policies when he was the mayor or something, who cares, right? I mean… he’s your dad and you’re you. Yeah?”

Pete looked at Patrick with full-on heart eyes, cartoonishly big and bright and hopeful and eager.

“Yeah, okay,” Pete said. “Did you- did you still wanna go get ice cream? I left my broom up here earlier, but we can fly back down, if you want?”

“Fly?” Patrick said dubiously. He wouldn’t put it past Pete in his weird house and his weird clothes and his very fucking weird town, but he had to admit that he was more than a little nervous.

“I’m a champion flyer,” Pete said. “I’ll have you know I outflew Sophie Cromwell in the all-town games last year. I’m undefeated.”

“Then I guess I trust you to know your way around a, uh, broomstick,” Patrick said. Why not go with it? How much weirder could this dream get?

Pete led him to the purple broom propped up in the corner and hefted it up, then lay it flat out in front of him. Or - he should have laid it out in front of him. He held it in front of him and let go, but rather than dropping, the neon broom hovered in midair, seeming to thrum slightly. If it weren’t crazier than even the rest of this day had been, Patrick would say the broom sounded _excited_. Pete gave it a pissy look, and with a slightly louder thrum, the broomstick lowered to just below the level of Pete’s hips.

Not that Patrick was staring at Pete’s hips, though now he was: the way they seemed to jut against the fabric of his robes was definitely noteworthy. 

“Thank you,” Pete muttered. “Be nice, we’ve got company.”

He swung his leg over the side of the broom, then looked up at Patrick, eyebrows raised again.

“You coming?” he asked.

“Behind you?” Patrick asked, and Pete snorted. Patrick felt heat rise in his cheeks, but thankfully he didn’t blush quite so easily as Pete. With as much dignity as he could muster, he also climbed onto the broom. It was a little harder for him, as Pete was taller and he had to stretch onto his toes to lean over it, but he managed, and once seated on the broom at a very careful angle to not crush his balls, he leaned forward, arms wrapped around Pete’s waist.

“I don’t mean to criticize,” Patrick said, his lips alarmingly close to Pete’s ear. Another thing he really didn’t mind. “But unless there’s a famous ice cream parlor in your room, this isn’t gonna work. We’re indoors.”

“Don’t you have eyes?” Pete asked. Before Patrick could ask what the hell _that _was supposed to mean, Pete snapped his fingers. There was a green spark in his hand for a moment, then the enormous, circular window that let so much light into his room burst open, filling the room with unfiltered, buttery orange sunlight. Patrick felt his chest loosen at the clear blue day, like the ancient, stuffy house had made him forget that it was sort of beautiful outside.

“Hold on tight,” Pete suggested. Patrick tightened his grip around Pete’s waist (his waist! What a day!) and Pete laughed. “I like to go fast.”

“I can tell,” Patrick said, and with a whoop, Pete kicked off the ground and sent them careening out of the window.

Flying on a broomstick was absolutely nothing like being on a flying bus. 

There was nothing beneath Patrick, no floor, no safety net. There was nothing behind him either, and if he leaned back he would fall off into his immediate death. The only thing supporting him was a plastic pole gripped between his legs, smashed up against his balls. 

Pete let out a whoop of pure joy as he propelled them through the window. The sky opened out beneath them. It wasn’t that it was so fast (though the speed at which they flew out the window was definitely horrifying, made more intense by the fact that Patrick could feel the wind tearing at his face) but that there were no seatbelts, no floors, no place to fall but the ground and nothing to grip but Pete’s waist. While he watched the haunted house sink beneath them, Patrick thought, a little hysterically, that he no longer believed he was dreaming. This, this intensity, this terror, had to be real.

“Yeah-hah!” Pete crowed, not quite a yee-haw, but enough to send up another flurry of hysterical giggles in Patrick. The wind swallowed the embarrassing sound, thankfully, and though Patrick couldn’t say he was used to it, not by a long shot, he buried his face in Pete’s shoulder and tried to _lean into it_, the way he might lean into a motorcycle on a hairpin turn or a car on ice careening towards sudden death. When the broom tipped forward, Patrick didn’t try to hold himself in place, but slid forward, knees clamped like a bear trap around Pete’s legs. When they swerved hard to one side or the other, Patrick didn’t think about the awful, stomach churning drop below them, but instead embraced the sensation of being about to tip off, about to fall into forever.

The broomstick flight seemed endless. They were going so fast that Patrick kept thinking it had to be almost over, that they were going to touch down any moment, but still they flew. He chanced opening his eyes once and they were immediately stung by the wind. The world below was a fiery blur of orange and red, and everywhere else was just endless blue sky. Patrick squeezed his eyes shut again and held onto Pete tighter, too overwhelmed to feel self-conscious.

Patrick felt them slowing down, but he was still shocked when his feet touched the ground. His eyes snapped open of their own accord, and he slid off the side of the broomstick, landing ass-first on the brick road. 

"Dude, are you okay?" Pete asked. His eyes positively glimmered with mirth even as his mouth was twisted up in concern, and Patrick realized he was being laughed at.

"Fine," he said, standing up by himself and brushing off his robes. He could practically taste acid on his tongue as he spoke. "Thanks for your concern."

"Not much of a fly-guy, huh?" Pete asked. "We could've walked back, if you'd told me."

"I don't- it's not flying," Patrick said, though it might have been. "You just go really fast."

"That's what makes it fun!" Pete said, but he didn't push it. "But- oh, forget it. You're kinda cute when you're angry."

Patrick, to his own credit, didn't stamp his foot in annoyance.

"Fuck off," he said instead, not deeply articulate, but it got the point across. "You are totally ruining this date."

"Date?" Pete asked. Eager again, with puppyish eyes. They were standing much too close, and Patrick thought he could feel the electric current in the centimeters between their hands.

"Obviously," said Patrick, willing his voice not to shake. "C'mon, where's this legendary ice cream you're gonna buy me back with?"

Pete parked his neon broom outside in a broom rack (as opposed to a bike rack, Patrick realized, as these were dotted all over town) and opened the door for Patrick. It was the kind of cutesy, kitschy place he expected of a tourist town by the sea, the kind of place where all the chairs were made of decorative twists of iron fragile as twigs and the sign proclaimed it was a "shoppe" rather than a "shop." This store, too, had been decorated for Halloween. Jack O'Lanterns grinned from inset shelves and little tables, orange and black and purple streamers exploded from the ceiling. The tiniest woman Patrick had ever seen stood behind the counter, her conical red hat bobbing wildly whenever she nodded after taking someone's order.

Naturally, Patrick loved it immediately. Most of the flavors were weird, nonsensical Halloween themed names, like "O Negative" and "Spider's Web," but there was also chocolate and vanilla. 

(Deep down, Patrick could address his own denial. They weren't labeled as blood just for fun, he knew, there was blood flavored ice cream for vampires in this magic town. But he was absolutely going to lose it if he thought too hard about that, so he filed the information away for later.)

Patrick ordered a hot fudge sundae from the gnome at the counter, something so normal he couldn't believe it was sold in Halloweentown, and Pete got a bowlful of what looked like the aftermath of an atomic bomb constructed of nothing but colorful sugar. Pete paid with huge, shiny coins that Patrick didn't recognize, and the two of them sat down at the window, where the bright October sunshine kept them warm even while they are ice cream. The ice cream was also, predictably, wonderful. It tasted hand-churned.

“So, weird little warlock,” Pete said. “How long are you planning on staying?”

“No idea,” Patrick said, hot fudge clinging to his teeth as he ate. “I really just came here by accident. I’ve got work in the morning… tomorrow? November first?”

“You do know today’s Halloween, right?” Pete asked.

“Of course I know it’s Halloween!” Patrick said. “I mean. I figured. It’s just… it was nighttime when I left, and morning when I got here, and they sell blood flavored ice cream here and I’m having a very confusing day. Or couple of days.”

“You know I don’t know what you mean at all, right?” Pete asked. His tongue was a tie-dye masterpiece of color, and Patrick had the completely unbidden thought that it was super cute.

“Yeah, I figured,” Patrick said. “Let’s not worry about my getting home right now. I can get fired. It’s worth it to hang out here. This town is so cool, and I’m-”

He cut himself off. He was sober, he was fairly sure, but he didn’t want to say anything embarrassing about how much fun he was having being with Pete in particular. 

“So, you don’t fly,” Pete said. “And clearly you’re not a show-off about magic and stuff, which I appreciate. What _do _you do for fun, little warlock?”

“Okay, I’ll let you keep the nickname, but you have to drop the ‘little,’” Patrick said. “I’m, like, your height.”

He wasn’t, but there was no way Pete could know that, as Patrick’s boots had been giving him a lift all day. Pete snorted, rolled his eyes, and talked around the enormous mouthful of ice cream he had just spooned into his mouth.

“Just calling you ‘warlock’ feels weird,” Pete said. “C’mon, what’d’you do for fun?”

“Music,” Patrick said. He felt boring all of a sudden. Usually saying he was a musician was like a cool party trick, and boy talking to him would look really impressed for a moment. Patrick was a _musician_, cool, like the kind that played gigs? And then Patrick could tell them, yeah, he opened at the house of blues once, and that band didn’t work out, but still. The hot guy would go “Whoa,” and Patrick would get to third base and somehow none of this seemed remotely interesting with Pete staring at him all eager eyes, Pete who could, apparently, _fly_.

“‘Music’?” Pete repeated. “You gonna elaborate?”

“A lot of music?” Patrick laughed. “I play, um, everything, and I listen to a lot of music, and I play in bands, and I work at a record store, so. Pretty much my whole personality is music.”

“Wow,” Pete said, and for some reason, he looked impressed too. “I mean, dedicating your whole life to, like, art, that’s so cool. I wish I had the time or the dedication for that. Do they have a lot of record stores in Sic- no, Shitaco?”

“It’s- Chicago, Chicago.”

“Yeah! there?”

“A fair few,” Patrick said, biting back a laugh.

“That’s so cool,” Pete said. “We’ve just got a little one in Halloweentown and it takes forever to get new stuff in. I mean, obviously there’s the internet, but-”

“That’s totally not the same as a real record,” Patrick said. “The physical vinyl makes all the difference in sound-”

“Exactly! And it’s such a pain to try and mooch my way through someone else’s portal whenever I want a new album.”

Patrick considered asking Pete what the hell he meant by that (and, distantly, he felt a pang of silence that they were so different, that whatever this town was made Pete so different that sometimes it felt like they were speaking different languages), but Pete barrelled right on with the conversation.

“So, you don’t focus on magic much, then? I guess it’s hard, with the university not really teaching magic anymore, but still, dressing like that, I assumed you were the kinda guy who had a shed full of cauldrons and spent all his teenage years buried in tomes of ancient spells.” Pete’s eyes were still dancing with light, and Patrick, who was still trying to figure out what it meant that all of this was real and not a drugged up hallucination, had a horrible thought.

“Pete,” he said. “Wait, you know that I’m not actually-”

Patrick was cut off by the noisy jangling of the door slamming open. He and Pete both turned to see a gaggle of refreshingly human looking girls come in, all of them talking and laughing loudly. It felt almost normal, like seeing a pack of girls at the mall, but they looked edgier to Patrick, dangerous somehow, and not just by merit of the elaborate, black costumes they all wore.

“Oh boy, here comes the gang,” Pete said. He was still smiling, but his tone was annoyed, thick with sarcasm.

“You get gangs here? Are there, like, Crips and Bloods in Halloweentown?” Patrick asked.

“They’re not a real gang,” Pete said, his voice low and, if Patrick wasn’t mistaken, a little embarrassed. “They just call themselves that. They’re old hangers-on to my dad and the Dalloways. Stupid.”

“You know I don’t know what you mean at all, right?” Patrick asked. Pete snorted, good mood back in a flash.

“Yeah, I guess so. They’re just pretty, popular witches who still think that mortals are less than. Which, like, fair enough, right? But they campaign to get Dalloway - old dude who tried to stop the portals from being open - out of jail, and they all but write my dad love letters. It’s _weird_, and they want to rule over the mortal world, even if they don’t call it that. As soon as the Black Cat Girls get big enough that the mayor hears about them, they’re gonna get in some deep fucking trouble.”

Pete’s explanation didn’t make much more sense to Patrick than the abbreviated story he’d been given, but it was enough to make his stomach twist. 

"Rule over the mortals?" Patrick asked.

"They subjugated us long enough," Pete muttered. Then, seeming to catch the abjectly frightened look Patrick was giving him, held up his hands. "I don't agree with them. Or my dad, for that matter. I'm not suggesting we enslave all humans, that's crazy. I just mean… they're not exactly good creatures, are they?"

Patrick wasn't really articulate enough to defend all of humanity, and his ice cream was roiling in his stomach, so he shrugged. 

"I wouldn't know," he said. The words tasted like cotton in his mouth, a dry and unpleasant texture to them. "There's not a lot of talk of mortal versus non-mortal in Chicago. Guess I hadn't thought about it."

"Geez, you think I'm a total monster," Pete said. Patrick thought, before he could stop himself, _maybe in more ways than one_, then immediately felt guilty. Pete wasn't a monster. He was just… prejudiced. For reasons that Patrick didn’t understand at all, because he knew nothing about this world. 

“It’s not like - I mean, I’ve never even met a mortal,” Pete said. He smiled, trying to lighten the mood, and Patrick tried to smile back, though he wasn’t feeling especially smiley. “I guess some of them are fine. But you hear about all those awful wars and then, like, they way they used to treat us! I mean, I’m not like my dad, I swear. It just bothers me, still.”

“It’s just…” Patrick didn’t really know how to argue this. He didn’t really know what he was arguing, but he had to say something. “How can you blame people for what they’ve done so long ago, they’ve forgotten it? For what their ancestors have done? Isn’t it a little-?”

Patrick was cut off by another pumpkinheaded creature bumping their table, the Jack O’Lantern gap in their mouth twisting into a sneer.

“Sorry,” they said, voice drippy with sarcasm. “Didn’t mean to bump into you there, little Kal.”

Patrick turned to Pete to see what the hell that insult meant, and saw that Pete had closed his eyes. His knuckles were tight against the old wood of the table, and he looked like he was in physical pain.

“People blame you for what your parents have done all the time,” he muttered.

They left the little ice cream shop not long after, walking down the leaf strewn streets. Patrick wanted to stop in every shop filled with crystals and cobwebs, see every vendor’s wares of magic mirrors and potions. Signs advertised cures to Wolf Pattern Baldness (“Keep that fur luxurious and mangy as it was when you were young!”) and Dragon Candy, purported to taste like real jewelry (“A much cheaper option than pawn shops! Even in the human world!”). Pete didn’t mind, only occasionally shook his head and asked what on earth you _could _buy where Patrick was from, to which Patrick just gave a nervous smile. 

The two of them came at last to a small music shop, dingy and nearly picked clean. Normally, Patrick would be over the moon to go music shopping with a cute boy (a slightly specist cute boy, but still) but that day he only wanted to look at magic, which seemed to pour from every nook and cranny in this town like stuffing from an overstuffed cushion, all of it bursting at the seams.

“I’ll go in, then,” Pete said, shaking his head. “Just stay outside the store so you don’t get lost, okay?”

“Yes, Mother,” Patrick said, but he didn’t really mind that much. He was, in fact, sure to get lost without Pete. All the cobbled streets here were winding, jutting off at strange angles and twining into unexpected alleys. And, as there was a large cart pushed just in front of the music store that held tiny statues that danced and spoke and interacted on their little pedestals, Patrick was sure to keep busy while Pete was gone. 

Pete smiled at him, his big toothy smile that Patrick already knew and loved, and he leaned in till their noses were nearly touching, then spun on his heels at once and ran inside the store, the bell over the door tinkling as he did. Patrick watched his back until he disappeared into the aisles, then turned back to the cart parked in front of the shop. 

Patrick had just leaned down to peer closer at one of the statues - a ballerina perched mid-pirouette that, when touched, landed on the balls of her feet and began to dance - when someone knocked him forward. 

Patrick’s immediate reaction was to throw out his hands to stop himself from falling, but as he caught sight of the cart covered in all its fragile wares, he twisted at the last second, landing hard on the stone ground with a crack that shuddered up his bones. 

“You new in town?”

There was a shadow blocking the sun, and Patrick looked up at it. The shadow was vaguely person-shaped, though it was lit so that he couldn’t really see them. 

“Was it obvious?” Patrick asked. He couldn’t even blame the costume. Everyone was dressed weird here, and Patrick was fairly certain that he was as close as it came to normal in terms of fashion.

“Lemme give you some advice,” the big, angry shape said. “Stay away from Kalabar’s brat. His soul’s just as black and twisted as his dad’s.”

“Jesus, what did this guy do?!” Patrick asked, annoyed. He pushed himself back up, wincing at the jolt of pain that rain up his spine. “If it was that bad, shouldn’t he be in jail or something?”

“You defending him?” the guy asked. Standing, Patrick could see him better, a boy a little younger than him with an enormous, pointed nose, blue skin, and a huge, shaggy mane of blue hair. He kind of looked like a troll doll, Patrick thought, then had to bite back laugher, because for all he knew, he could be.

“Who, Pete?” Patrick asked. “He seems like a really nice guy, and I met his dad, and he seemed fine, so whatever this Kalabar guy did-”

Patrick didn’t get to finish his sentence as he was knocked backwards with a fist in his face. He clutched his nose and blinked up at his assailant in disbelief.

“C’mon, witch,” the troll said, eyes burning with hatred. “You like your precious Kalabar so much? Like his plans for the world? How bout you prove it. Knock me back.”

Patrick wasn’t really a fighting guy. He’d only gotten into two fights in his life, both of them drunk and half-assed. But, then, he was still a teeny, tiny bit drunk. Just enough to not hold back as he socked the troll right back.

Retribution was immediate, and Patrick was knocked back onto the ground, thes troll on top of him letting out a scream of rage. Patrick kicked at him, but the troll seemed to be made of tougher stuff than he was. (And really, Patrick thought to himself, he should have expected that.) he was distantly aware that a crowd (of monsters) was gathering (to watch him get kicked to hell and back). 

“C’mon? Not gonna fight me like a witch? Too proud to use those special powers you’re always lording over people on me?”

Patrick wanted to say no, it wasn’t him, they had the wrong guy, but there were bright, cotton-candy blue hands around his neck, and he suddenly found it very difficult to say anything at all. And, as terrifying as being choked out by another, well, not human being, but creature was, it also made him want to laugh his awful, hysterical laugh. He realized all at once that he could _die _there, in another world, a magical Halloween dimension, and his mom would never, ever know what had happened to him. It shouldn’t be funny, but it was.

“Get the fuck away from-!”

“Let him up, man-”

“C’mon, what’d that guy do to you?”  
“You gotta work on your temper, G.”

Then the hands released him and Patrick bent over, sputtering as he coughed in air. 

“Whad’you have against mortals, anyway?” the troll asked. He sounded mollified, though Patrick couldn’t really look at him. He just coughed, spat up a gob of foamy pink spit, and laughed.

“I don’t have anything against mortals!” he said, blinking up at the crowd. “I’m pretty sure I _am _mortal, but no one’s told me.”

Then, Patrick knew he had made a mistake. The whole world went very, very quiet, silent but for the skittering of the dry leaves on pavement.

“What?” he asked.

“Holy crap, he’s bleeding,” someone said. “Bleeding red. Isn’t that-?”

“He’s mortal?”

“What’s he doing here?”

Too many people were talking all at once, and Patrick’s head still ached from being pushed around and from drinking too much. He blinked, trying to clear his head, felt a hot trickle coming down from his nose that he at first thought was an embarrassing trail of snot and then realized was blood. He blinked a few times in the hopes that he could get his vision to straighten out. 

He was being stared at by too large of a crowd, just as he had suspected. He he didn’t expect was Pete, no longer in the music shop, staring at Patrick with an absolutely inscrutable expression. And oh, right, but Pete didn’t like mortals, did he? There was no way, Patrick thought, that Pete had missed him saying that he was a mortal. Not with his luck. He expected to feel embarrassing tears stinging at the corners of his eyes, but he did not. He was, perhaps, too tired to cry. Too tired to feel much of anything. 

After a moment, Pete took a step forward. His face was still blank, but he took a deep, shuddering breath as he broke the line of people crowded around Patrick.

“Patrick?” Pete said. “We should go.”

Patrick lurched back, just a tiny bit, but Pete tensed up entirely. Then he steeled himself and grabbed Patrick’s arm.

“C’mon,” he said. “We should go.”

“Hey!” the troll shouted. “Let him go! I can take care of him, whereas you’re clearly just gonna go kill him!”

“I’ve got him!” Pete said. “I can take care of the mortal.”

“Clearly not!” a vampire in the crowd sneered, and Patrick, dazed, thought hey, the vampire was out in the sunlight.

“I can take care of the mortal,” someone else said. 

“I can-!” Pete began hotly, and Patrick ripped his arm from Pete’s hand.

“The mortal can take care of himself,” Patrick said. He turned on his (chunky, enormous) heels, and walked fast in the opposite direction, not stumbling over his robes or swiping at his eyes even once as he did so.

Patrick rounded two corners and tripped three times before looking up at all the clearly residential buildings around him and realizing he had no clue where he was. Then he began to feel close to tears: lost in another world, finding out the hot boy who was his only friend there was disgusted by the concept of his being human. 

“Patrick?”

No one here knew Patrick’s name but Pete, and yet, that wasn’t Pete’s voice, so Patrick looked up. There, at the mouth of the alley Patrick had just gone down, was a very confused looking Joe Trohman.

“Joe?” Patrick asked, and then Joe stepped forward, and it clicked in Patrick’s head all at once.

Joe had green skin and pointed, elfen ears. His always tangled mane of hair was now scattered with leaves and twigs. He was wearing a Peter Pan-ish tunic and fucking slippers, for Christ’s sake, and he still smelled like All Hash-Low’s Eve. Joe was from Halloweentown. 

But Joe actually knew who Patrick was.

“Holy shit, dude, what are you doing here?” Joe asked. He jogged forward, moving lithely, completely inhuman, but Patrick was getting used to that, and he didn’t mind so much. “How did you get here? Why are you bleeding? Are you- you’re not the mortal that people said Kalabar was torturing, are you?”

“What?!” Patrick asked. “I’m- I got on the wrong bus! I got on the wrong bus and met a cute guy who’s apparently the son of a famous asshole? Joe, where are we?”

“We’re in Halloweentown,” Joe said. “Jesus, how’d you get on the Halloweentown bus?”

“I was trying to get back into the city from Evanston!” Patrick said. “I didn’t know it would take me to another dimension!”

“Okay, calm down,” Joe said, holding up his hands. “Let’s just- let’s get you to the mayor. She’ll know what to do.”

***

Patrick guessed that it made sense that this world, which revolved around towns and cities rather than countries, would place so much importance on its mayor. Still, it was a little jarring to have Joe all but run him up to city hall and beg to be let in to see her, pushing past a nervous looking secretary that was also, for some goddamn reason, a pincushion. The silver lining to all of it was that Joe was there, and even if he and Patrick had never been close friends, they were still friends, and Patrick could really use the friendly face in that moment.

“So… I don’t want to guess the wrong species and offend you,” Patrick said on the elevator ride up to the office. “But are you-?”

“A dryad,” Joe said. “I like trees. Plants.”

“Weeds?”

“Yeah, so what? It’s natural, dude.”

“And you’re from Halloweentown? Why’d you come to Chicago?”

“I was looking for a change of pace,” Joe said with a shrug. “Most of the kids around here go to the mortal world for a while, these days. I just ended up liking Chicago and sticking around.”

“Lucky you found me,” Patrick admitted.

“Yeah,” Joe said as the elevator dinged and the doors opened. “You’ve got blood all over your robes, by the way. Might wanna wipe them off before we go in to see the mayor.

When they made it up to the grand office overlooking the city, Patrick expected the mayor to be a wise but powerful elderly woman, a Professor McGonagal type who was stern and commanded respect. He was, therefore, shocked by the bubbly girl who couldn’t have been that much older than him looking up from her pile of paperwork. She grinned up at Joe out from under the enormous brim of her moon and star hat, and clapped her hands as she stood up.

“Hey, Joe!” she said. “How’s it going? And oh, jeez, what happened to your friend?”

“Patrick,” Joe said. “This is Marnie Cromwell. Mayor Cromwell, I should say.”

“Jeez, call me Marnie, you make me sound old,” Marnie said, wrinkling her nose. “I’m so sorry, Patrick - should I know you?”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Joe said with a laugh. “Patrick’s from the mortal world. He got here on accident.”

Marnie blinked up at Patrick, her eyes huge.

“How does a mortal get here on accident?” she asked - talking to Joe, not him, Patrick noticed sourly. “I mean, like…. How did he even find a portal? He’s dressed like a warlock, are you sure-?”

“There was a bus outside the house were I was at a Halloween party,” Patrick said. He hoped he didn’t sound too annoyed, but in his defense, he was having a rough day. “I was dressed up for a Halloween party, and I was trying to go home, and I took the wrong bus."

"I didn't even know the bus was still running," Marnie said. She looked into the middle distance for a moment, totally blindsided, then shook her head once. "Right, well, are you okay? You're bleeding and- you haven't gotten into too much trouble here, have you? I mean, people haven't caused any trouble for you? I know how overwhelming this place can be at first, trust me."

"No, it's been great," Patrick said, and was shocked to realize that he meant it. "I mean, a troll beat me up for hanging out with the son of…. Kalabar? I think that was his name? But the ice cream place downtown is excellent."

"Kalabar's son?!" Marnie said, eyes enormous. "But- oh man, this is a mess. Should have been brought straight to me, but no! Just because I'm half-mortal…"

"You've almost destroyed Halloweentown, like, seven times," Joe added. 

"When I was a teenager! Everyone almost blows places up with magic amulets when they're teenagers!"

"Speak for yourself."

"Joe, quit… bullying the mayor," Patrick said. He squirmed a little next to him, the little _I'm not with him_ gesture. 

"It's fine," Marnie said, giving Patrick a little, reassuring smile. "We've known each other a long time. I'm used to him."

"Right, so what now?" Joe asked. Marnie pursed her lips, her fingernails drumming on the desk, but before she could speak, a voice came from the shadowy corner of the room.

"He has to go home."

Patrick felt like someone had dropped an anvil on his chest. He'd only known Pete for a day, sure, but he would recognize his voice anywhere already. What could he say? He had it bad. And Pete didn't sound jovial or eager to please, he sounded flat, somehow, his voice threaded with a dark undercurrent of anger. 

Pete stepped out into the light, and then Marnie and Joe gasped. Patrick tried to see it through their eyes. To see Pete through their eyes. Assuming this Kalabar guy was the worst of the worst, the torturous/dictator/terrorist of Halloweentown (in spite of apparently only being under house arrest) and he had a son who wasn't involved in his crimes… what would it be like, then? If he saw the skinny boy with shaggy black hair and dark shadows under his eyes, his face a blank mask, and he was expecting this boy to be the bad guy?

Patrick guessed that, to the Halloweentown natives, Pete looked scary.

"I'm really not in any hurry to get back. Don't worry about it," Patrick said.

"You don't _belong _here," Pete said. Patrick didn't even get a chance to feel anything before Marnie stepped in front of him in a whirlwind of robes.

"How did you get into my office?" she asked, drawn up to her full height. She ought to have towered over him, but instead they seemed evenly matched, light and dark. Stood leaning towards each other in the big, wood panelled room while sun streamers in on them casting dramatic shadows on their faces, they looked like a painting. Patrick's costume felt faker than ever, next to two honest-to-fuck wizards that we're about to- wait. Not about to fight, he hoped, but the way Pete's mouth pulled up at the corner in a snarl sure did look like it.

"I walked," he said. "Can't very well magic myself up here, can I?"

“What do you want?” Marnie asked. 

“I’m the one who’s been with the mortal this whole time. I ought to be here to fill you in. Just doing my civic duty.”

Pete said the whole thing flatly, monotonously, but Patrick could still feel derision dripping from the word _mortal_. 

“I was here with me for the whole day,” Patrick said in a falsely cheery voice. Pete didn’t look at him, though he flinched when Patrick spoke. “I think I can fill her in just fine.”

“You don’t belong here!” Pete said. 

“Yes, you’ve made your opinion on mortals abundantly clear,” Patrick said. _Look at me_. “But I don’t need your help.”

“Okay, that’s it,” Marnie said. She grabbed Pete by the shoulder - for an awful second, Pete’s eyes blazed and Patrick was sure he was going to attack her - and Joe’s arm, and led them towards the door. “You two are going to wait outside and be nice while I talk to Patrick. And if you can both make it through the next few minutes while being civil, then you’re welcome to bring any grievances about your relative amount of magic, Peter.”

Marnie slammed the door on both of them, then turned looking like a girl. Just a regular, exhausted girl, almost like she was playing dress up too.

“Have a seat, Patrick,” she said. 

Patrick sat down in a cushy couch by the window that overlooked main street. He had an excellent view of the twelve-foot Jack O’Lantern, flickering with light already, though the sun was nowhere near setting. This night just kept stretching on and on, and as cool as Halloweentown was, it seemed like the best part of it had ended spectacularly. 

Marnie, rather than sitting across from him, sat down next to him. 

“You want some hot cocoa?” she asked. She snapped her fingers and a tea tray laden with a pot and several cups on it came zooming towards them, skidding to a stop before it crashed into their faces.

“Uh, sure,” Patrick said, and she snapped her fingers again. The teapot lifted itself and poured a thick stream of liquid into one of the cups. A marshmallow with legs hoisted itself out of a jar on the tray and leaped into the cup, at which point Marnie nodded pointedly, and Patrick took the teacup, blowing on it a little before drinking. 

“Thanks,” he said. “Sorry if I’m out of it, I just am having a hell of a day.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Marnie said. “I didn’t come here for the first time till I was thirteen, and it was a little bit much at first. I mean, I love Halloween, always have-”

“Me too!” Patrick said. Marnie grinned at him.

“God, isn’t this so cool, though?” she asked.

“It’s amazing here. I was having a great day, but then… Pete…” Patrick trailed off. “I don’t understand. What is all this Kalabar shi- stuff about?”

“Well, when I first came to Halloweentown, on the bus, on Halloween, when I was thirteen,” Marnie said. “The mayor was Kalabar - Pete’s dad. He was really nice to me and my sister and brother, and a little too nice to my mom, if you know what I mean. But it was a trick, because he was planning on sapping my family of their magic powers and then, you know, taking over the mortal world. Your world.”

“Oh,” Patrick said. “Well that’s a little… not great. But he’s still at his house, raising his kids?”

“Halloweentown isn’t really big on prisons,” Marnie said. “So, yeah. He was stripped of his magic and put on house arrest. Then his son came to my world and seduced me and tried to turn all the mortals into monsters and put the gray spell on Halloweentown-”

“Pete did that?!”

“No, no! Sorry, his older brother, Kal.”

“Kalabar and Kal?”

“I didn’t name them.”

“You can definitely see some favoritism in the family,” Patrick muttered. “So, after that?”

“Well, Kal was hurt pretty bad when we defeated him,” Marnie said with a wince. “But he was also put under house arrest, and after that the council stripped them of their family magic.”

“The whole family?” Patrick asked. “But Pete didn’t do anything.”

Marnie shrugged.

“They thought it was safer that way,” she said. “He has a little bit of magic, just not as much as he was born with. The problem is that magic runs in families, and it’s hard to distinguish between individual members. My boyfriend has no magic because of that.”

“Okay, sure,” Patrick said. “It still sucks, but sure. So Pete doesn’t like mortals?”

“Apparently not,” Marnie said. “He doesn’t have enough magic to create a portal to the mortal world, and no mortals have ever come to Halloweentown before - but I guess his dad might’ve poisoned the way he thinks about the world.”

“And if he thinks mortals are the reason he barely has magic,” Patrick said. Marnie nodded unhappily.

“I’m sorry you got caught up in politics here, Patrick. Are you doing okay otherwise?”

“Yeah, fine,” Patrick said. “I mean, I guess? Honestly I’m not sure if I’m still drunk or a little hungover now, but I’m not hurt or anything.”

“Except for your face,” Marnie said.

“And my hands earlier, yeah.”

“Your hands?”

“Pete patched me up, don’t worry. “ Patrick paused, and Marnie reached over, putting an arm around his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess you two really hit it off at first, huh?”

Patrick shrugged. He really, really wasn’t in the mood to talk relationship problems with some alternate dimension Halloween girl.

“Why do they keep calling me mortal?” he asked. “I mean… are witches immortal or something?”

“Kinda?” Marnie said. “Honestly, I’m too afraid to ask. It’s been a long time and now it’ll just look stupid if I still don’t know? But my grandma Aggie is, like, fifteen hundred years old, so… we definitely live a lot longer than mortals. But we still age.”

“Not like humans do, though,” Patrick said. 

“We’re still human,” Marnie said, looking a little offended. “We’re just not _mortal_ is all.”

“Clear distinction,” Patrick said. He sipped at the hot cocoa and immediately felt better, more awake and invigorated. “So, still human, take forever to die - how does magic work, anyway?”

Marnie smiled and laughed a little, like she was remembering something fondly.

“My grandma always said that magic is easy,” she said. “She told me that magic is as simple as wanting something and letting yourself have it.”

“It sounds… really nice,” Patrick said. 

“It’s the best thing in the world,” Marnie said. Her face was utterly inscrutable, not quite pitying, but still somehow sad, like she wanted to be able to give Patrick what she had. 

“So… how often does the bus run?” patrick asked, hoping to clear some of the heaviness from the air. 

“It only runs on Halloween,” Marnie said. “And I don’t know how well the portal will work for you, you know. I don’t think mortals have ever gone through the portal between worlds. I don’t even know if they can.”

“But you’re half mortal!” Patrick said. “So, I mean-”

“I just don’t want to risk your life on that,” Marnie said. “But we can go down to the ticket station, see when the next bus leaves.”

“Couldn’t I just stay here?” Patrick asked. The tea tray jittered on the table, and Marnie blinked at him in disbelief.

“Why would you want to stay here?” she asked. Patrick shrugged.

“I mean, this place is cool!” he said. “I love Halloween! It feels _nice _here, and it’s not as though I have a job I care about back home or a boyfriend or girlfriend or anything.” He willed himself not to think about Pete, but he did anyway.

“Don’t you have parents? Family, friends? If you stayed here, the bus only runs on Halloween. I could try to make a portal for you if you change your mind, but I think it would be better if you went home.”

“So, I really don’t belong here?” Patrick asked. “Because I’m mortal.”

“Because there are no mortals in Halloweentown, yeah, but also because you don’t have anything else here. You can love Halloween without living it every day.” 

Patrick was quiet for a minute.

“Guess it’s like the end of _Nightmare Before Christmas. _Stick to your own world while appreciating the others.”

“Kinda,” Marnie said. “I’m sorry. It’s my world too, and I know how easy it is to love it. But I promise you, if you ever want to come back… the bus does run every Halloween.” She smiled, trying to comfort him, and Patrick let himself be comforted, a little. He deserved to wallow. Then Patrick took a brief break from feeling devastated that no one wanted him there to have an even more horrified thought.

“You’re not gonna like, Men in Black flash-y thing me, are you?” he asked. “Like, I get to remember!”

“God, of course!” Marnie said. “Why would we wipe your memory?”

“I don’t know,” Patrick shrugged. “So I don’t spill all your secrets?”

“Not to be rude or anything,” Marnie said. “But I don’t think anybody would believe you.”

She was still smiling her kind, cool-older-sister smile, and Patrick knew what it meant. He chugged the last of his magic hot cocoa - really too delicious, and maybe it would be kinder if he could forget how cool magic was and just go back to never knowing - then stood up with her.

***

The sun was just starting to turn the hazy orange color of sunset at Patrick climbed back onto the bus leaving Halloweentown, which Marnie promised him several times would take him right back to where and when he had caught it. 

“You can take a later bus, you know,” she said. “If you want to stay a while longer.”

But Patrick was stupid and lovesick and he doubted there was anything he could say in the next six or so hours - by midnight was the rule Marnie gave him - to convince Pete that he was still the same person. The same Patrick that he’d spent most of the day almost kissing. If Patrick did come up with a plan to make Pete fall in love with him (again) it would be a six month plan, not a six hour plan. 

So, he sat on the bus, watching the sun set over Halloweentown. He sort of wished, then, that he had at least stayed until after dark, to see the big jack o’lantern in all its glory. 

At least he got to go to an awesome Halloween celebration, he thought to himself. It was sure as shit better than any of the parties he’d been invited to back home.

Patrick was slumped in his seat, feeling sorry for himself, when the girls got on the bus. The gang of them, all younger than him, all dressed up in fancy witch outfits, were giggling amongst themselves, looking conspiratorial. As they sat down all around him in the back, still chatting, Patrick realized why they looked familiar: he’d seen them earlier that day. They were the little gang, the ones Pete called the Black Cat Girls. And, as they hadn’t really seemed to notice him, he leaned in to try and hear some of their conversation. 

“...looked like a wreck, honestly,” the blond one said.

“Shame,” said the green-haired girl. “He’s so cute. And could you imagine that house?”

“That family?” said another girl.

“Can’t believe Kal went for that Cromwell slut,” green-hair said. 

“No need to dwell on the past,” the blond girl said, flipping her hair over a milky white shoulder. “Besides, after tonight, the Cromwells will get what’s coming to them and Kal will be an eligible bachelor again.”

They giggled, and Patrick leaned forward, trying not to be too conspicuous.

“Don’t anyone else get their hopes up,” an African American girl said… was Halloweentown American? Was “black” an offensive term here? Patrick tried to get his thoughts back in line. “Kal’s mine. But the rest of you can fight over Pete, once he stops moping over-”

“God, don’t even say it,” the blonde girl said. “God. Makes me want to gag that he got tricked like that.”

“The good news is that mortal boy isn’t going to be able to come back to his happy little home,” green-hair said, and they all giggled. “God, Kal’s gonna be so pleased with us!”

“What about Pete?” a pink girl asked. Entirely pink, from head to toe, not that it mattered, or was even that interesting after the day Patrick had had. “I mean, even Kal might be down if we hurt him-”

“So what? He’ll get over it. We’re doing this for the good of _our _people. Besides, we won’t hurt his little brother too bad. He’ll live. Probably.”

Patrick had heard more than enough. He hunched his shoulders forward, ducked his head down, and pushed out of his bus seat, hustling down the aisle to get off. 

“Scuse me, sorry, coming through,” he muttered, almost tripping over several people’s monstrous feet and/or claws. “Sorry, bit of a rush.”

“You know that guy?” a girl at the back of the bus asked, one of the bitchy, bubble gum voices he had heard earlier, and Patrick leaped out the front door over the steps, and he hit the cobblestone street running. In _heels_, which, hey, take that ever action movie hero ever. He was sprinting down the street, making a pretty good pace until he tripped over his robes and fell face first onto the stone, scraping up his cheeks as he skidded forward.

_Motherfuck_.

Patrick could feel his face bleeding like a bitch, could see flecks of blood on the bricks below, gross, but there was no time, and besides, it wasn’t as though anyone didn’t know he was mortal. So he tossed his enormous hat to the side, and pulled his robes up over his head, leaving him in the slightly less ridiculous outfit of sparkly platform boots with his jeans and t-shirt look. Whatever. He couldn’t trip over his jeans and ruin everything.

Then Patrick took off running again.

The whole sky was hazy orange by the time he’d made it all the way to the top of the immense hill where Pete’s house was. It would be fully dark soon and there was no way Patrick could find his way through these winding streets after dark. Worse, in Patrick’s own head, the house looked much creepier, much more ominous in the dark, but Patrick steeled his nerves and walked right up to the gate.

Locked.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Patrick shouted. He growled and kicked the wrought iron gate, which just made his toes throb in his stupid, clunky boots. The fence was three times as tall as Patrick, and there were absolutely no footholds that allowed him to climb. It wasn’t as though he had a broomstick to fly over it with.

Instead, he turned to look at the lock, that big, heavy, anatomical heart. He tugged on it, and it clanged against the bars.

“Right,” Patrick said to himself. “Magic is easy. You just want something and let yourself have it?”

He tugged on the heart and wished, with all his might, that it would come loose. For the sake of Pete, whether he cared what happened to Patrick or not. He closed his eyes, held the heart, and he wished and wished and wished.

The heart shaped lock remained firm and cold in his hands.

“Okay, new plan,” Patrick said. He let the lock fall again, then slammed into the gate with his shoulder. His shoulder stung, adding on to the mass of injuries he’d garnered that day, but the lock must have been old and rusty, because it snapped with a shower of rust flakes, and the gate creaked inwards.

“Like Voldemort using a gun,” Patrick said aloud to himself, and he ran the rest of the way up the drive and banged on the door. 

“Pete!” he yelled. “Pete!”

There was a sound of thudding, someone pounding down a huge staircase, perhaps, and the door flew open to reveal Pete, his robes disheveled and his eyes rimmed in red.

“Patrick!” he whispered, eyes huge. “What are you doing here!?”

“I had to see you!” Patrick said. “Those girls, the Black Cat Girls on the bus, they’re planning on hurting you-”

“What are you talking about?!” Pete said.

Patrick opened his mouth, but then a shadow passed over both him and Pete as someone walked up behind Patrick, right between Patrick and the rest of Halloweentown outside of this house. 

“Hello, Patrick,” said Kalabar. He was smiling, but he was cold, somehow. He lifted a finger to Patrick’s cheek and wiped blood from his face in one smoothe, stinging motion. “You’re here just in time for dinner.

***

While very drunk and a little high, Patrick had wandered into another dimension, so it probably stood to reason that stone-cold sober Patrick walked into his own kidnapping. 

Tied to a stiff-backed dining chair at the most comically long table Patrick had ever seen in his life, Patrick could feel the scratches on his cheek throbbing, as he could feel Kalabar’s cold stare on his face.

“Truly, it’s wonderful news that you came back here so freely, Patrick,” Kalabar said. “We wanted a mortal to pull this off, but it is so hard for our family to cross between the worlds. To have one walk willingly into us is absolutely incredible.”

“Why do you need a mortal?” Patrick asked. His mouth tasted cottony in a way that had nothing to do with his hangover, and he couldn’t see Pete at all.

“Patrick, do you know how the portals between our worlds were opened full time in the first place?” Kalabar asked.

“Well, I only found out Halloweentown existed like, max twelve hours ago, so obviously not,” Patrick said, rolling his eyes. “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“The little Cromwell girl called upon the worlds _both creature and mortal_,” Kalabar said. “You see, most people think that all magic is sequestered in our world, but that’s not correct.”

He got right in Patrick’s face, grabbed his chin with one velvet gloved hand, and forced Patrick to stare into his eyes. They were just empty and cold, and Patrick did his best to hold his chin up and glare at the B-movie villain in front of him, just grateful that he wasn’t standing and shaking in his stupid boots.

“Mortals and witches are very similar creatures, you see. So similar that some people think the very vitality of mortals has in it a minute amount of magic. I think they must be right, for how else would Gwen’s brats have had such strong powers?”

“Who?” Patrick asked, and Kalabar scoffed, letting him go and striding away. Patrick let out a heavy sigh of relief, slightly hampered by the ropes around his chest. 

“Once we reopen the portal for ourselves, we can siphon all the magic our little family needs from the mortal world,” Kalabar said. “And we’ll never be powerless again. But opening a portal is impossible without magic. You see the conundrum. But with you here, with your blood, we can _call upon both creature and mortal_.”

“You know, usually it’s a bad idea for villains to just, like, reveal their evil plots to the good guys,” Patrick said. “Not trying to criticize you or anything, but I’m just saying.”

“Do you ever shut up?” Kalabar asked him.

“Tape my fucking mouth shut next time you bind me,” Patrick suggested.

Kalabar sighed.

“I have to prepare myself. Stay still while we get ready,” he said, then smiled at his own stupid joke before leaving the room. Patrick was starting to get why everyone hated the guy. 

Then he was alone in the big empty dining room, Pete not there, day un-saved. 

It was pretty miserable, then it got worse when the door opened again and Pete came in. Patrick slumped back against his chair and looked at the ceiling. 

“Is he going to kill me when you’re done?” Patrick asked.

“I don’t know,” Pete said. His voice was barely a whisper, but the room was soft enough that Patrick could hear it, even from a distance.

They stayed in miserable silence for a moment, Patrick still refusing to look at him or anywhere else in the stupidly ornate dining room. Even the ceiling he had his eyes fixed on had a chandelier fixed to it. 

“I was trying to warn you,” Patrick told him. “I thought they were going to hurt you.”

“The Black Cat girls were trying to go to the mortal world to open the portal from that side,” Pete said. “You need people on two sides. But if a mortal’s here, Dad thinks it’ll work better.”

“Are _you _going to kill me?” Patrick asked, his head snapping up to look at Pete.

“Never!” Pete said. “Patrick, I didn’t- I didn’t know-!”

“Didn’t know what?!” Patrick asked. “That your dad was trying to kill people like me, or that people like me were people at all?!”  
“Either! Both!” Pete said. “I never wanted you to get hurt!”

“What, because you think I’m cute? That’s shitty, Pete. Marnie was right. I should’ve just gone home and gone back to my boring fucking life because now I’m really gonna die in an alternate dimension and never see my mom again, and-”

Patrick couldn’t keep talking. He leaned against the chair, eyes closed.

“What did you come in here for, Pete? Forgiveness? That’s not gonna fucking happen.”

“It’s not like I lured you back!” Pete shouted. “I tried to get you to stay away! Tried to get you out of here!”  
“Just to have the life sucked out of me in the mortal world by his weird portal? How thoughtful!” Patrick shouted.

There was a creaking sound of wood on wood and when Patrick looked down again, Pete was sitting in a chair pulled right up next to him. 

“What if we could stop it?” Pete asked. “What if we could fix it?”

“How?” Patrick asked. “Can you get the mayor or something?”

“I can’t leave the house,” Pete said, and Patrick scoffed again. “I can’t, but just listen, okay - I’ll figure something out. We’ve got an hour-”

“Stellar,” Patrick said, and didn’t even wince when Pete looked hurt.

“We’ve got an hour,” Pete said again. “Trust me to figure something out.”

Patrick didn’t want to trust him, the mortal-hating cute boy whose father was out to murder him, but then, it didn’t seem like he had much choice.

Pete stood up, the chair squeaking as it rubbed against the floor, wood on wood. Patrick pressed himself back against the chair as far as he could in the hopes of the ropes feeling a little looser, but no such luck. He waited for Pete to walk away, but then Pete swooped in and pressed his lips to the top of Patrick’s head.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into Patrick’s hair. “I can fix this, I swear.”

And so, maybe trusting Pete wasn’t the worst option ever.

The ritual (and realistically, Patrick doubted they were calling it something as melodramatic as “the ritual” amongst themselves, but to him it was “the ritual”) was clearly about to begin once Pete and Kalabar sat down opposite one another at the table, now lit only by candles. There were no windows in this room, but from glimpses of the adjacent rooms through closing doors, Patrick could see that it was full dark outside, and the darkness in this remote place was a little frightening. No one was coming, and if Pete couldn’t get him out, Patrick didn’t want to think about what came next. 

“It’s funny, Patrick,” Kalabar said conversationally. “Dressed like that, I thought you were a warlock when I first met you. And here you are now, contributing to a piece of amazing magic. Since you like to emulate us, I should think you would be honored to be part of the magic now.”

“Yeah, I feel like a real guest of honor,” Patrick said. Kalabar gave him a look, and Patrick made a show of shutting his mouth. 

“Tonight,” Kalabar began, his voice deeper, his eyes shut, and his palms open and raised skyward on the table, and Patrick realized that was all the prelude they were going to get. Everything was happening so fast, and he scrunched his eyes shut. He hoped they wouldn’t miss him too much, back home, hoped that people could go on okay without him. And, even after it all, he hoped Pete got out of all of this okay.

“Tonight, we call upon the powers of creature… and mortal,” he said, lip curling with distaste as he looked at Patrick. “With blood combined, we shall open the portal.”

He took a knife that had been hidden in the folds of his robes and leaned over to Patrick, nicking the inside of his arm, now exposed since his robes were gone. He may as well look mortal for the part. The sting of the knife barely hurt Patrick, he was so buzzing with trepidation. Kalabar flicked the knife, droplets of blood landing on the smooth wooden surface of the table.

“We-”

“-call upon the powers both creature and mortal!” Pete shouted, standing up. Kalabar stared at him, but Pete stared him down as well his face full of real, fiery anger. “To banish you into a form fully mortal.”

Pete took Patrick’s bound hand and squeezed it.

“Help me,” he said. “Lend me your power.”

“I don’t have any,” Patrick said. Kalabar was sneering, the cold, blank fury on his face more than equal to his son’s.

“Everyone’s got a little magic,” Pete said. “You don’t need a lot. We just need more than him.”

“We call upon the powers both creature and mortal!” Pete shouted again. A halo of light began to appear around him, at first just looking like a sort of fuzzy aura, a glitch in a camera, but it grew stronger all the time. “To banish you into a form fully mortal!”

“Is this a real spell?” Patrick asked. 

“As long as you believe it is,” Pete said. Kalabar took a step forward. Patrick’s blood on the table began to glow a faint, reddish gold. Patrick squeezed Pete’s hand back.

“We call upon the powers both creature and mortal!” he said, because what the hell, it wasn’t like he had a better idea. “To banish you into a form fully mortal!”

Kalabar staggered back like he’d been hit in the chest, then snarled. 

“You’re no match for me, even weakened,” he said. “No mortal could ever-”

_Let yourself have it_, Patrick remembered suddenly. _Let him have it_. Warmth seemed to rise in his chest, and he _pushed _forward, not physically, against the ropes, but with his heart, and Kalabar staggered again. His skin, Patrick realized, was turning gray.

“We call upon the powers both creature and mortal to to banish you into a form fully mortal!” Pete and Patrick shouted in unison, and the blood stopped glowing and turned back into blood. When Patrick turned to Kalabar, he was grayscale, like a black and white movie.

“Why would you do this?” he asked a heaving Pete in a small, sad voice. “You could get your magic back too.”

Pete glanced at Patrick, and shrugged.

“There’s probably more important things in the world than just magic.”

***

Pete was still untying Patrick when Joe and Marnie burst into the room, both of them breathing heavy and looking almost annoyed to see that everything was fine.

“Oh,” said Marnie. “I see you took care of it.”

“Patrick, holy shit,” Joe said. “Are you okay? Jesus, I swear most people in Halloweentown aren’t like this, you just have shit luck.”

“I’ve noticed,” Patrick said. Pete cut the last rope free, and Patrick stretched, wincing as he did so. Kalabar, after all was said and done, shuffled off to bed. Which was, since he specifically had been stripped of his magic, all the Halloweentown penal system required. It was weird as shit, but Patrick guessed it was better than the prison industrial complex. 

What he wanted now, more than anything, was a minute alone with Pete, but no such luck. 

“You defeated Kalabar? All by yourself?” Marnie asked.

“Patrick helped,” Pete said, and Patrick gave her a teeny little wave. He felt pretty proud, until Joe snorted.

“Okay, what, asshole?” Patrick asked. 

“Yeah, you know that joke about how the final battle of Lion King was a malnourished teenager going up against a sick old man? That’s what your big battle was,” Joe said. “Pete and Kalabar can barely do magic and you’re not even a warlock.” Patrick glared at him.

“It was cool as shit, Joe, don’t take this from me,” he said. “My chest glowed.”

“That’s, like, a daily thing for me.”

“Let me have this.”

“Thank you, Pete, really,” Marnie said. “From the bottom of my heart, I- I guess I misjudged you. And I’m sorry.”

Pete looked so smug that Patrick half-wondered if he did this just for the “I told you so” element, but Patrick smiled back at him nonetheless.

“Yeah, well,” Pete shrugged. “Learned some stuff today. How did you guys even know to come?”

“Oh, I was following Patrick back to the mortal world in secret to make sure he got home safe-” Joe began.

“I don’t need a babysitter!” Patrick said.

“Clearly you do,” Joe said, and man, but Patrick didn’t remember bickering with him this much at mortal high school. “_Anyway_, he’d already left the bus, but these super weird girls were on it talking about their plans to, you know, rip the heart out of all humanity and open the portal and make out with little Kalabar up in his tower, so I followed them, caught them, brought them back to Marnie, and got the rest of the plan out of them and came with Marnie on the rescue mission. Which is here, though you guys don’t need rescuing, I guess.”

“Oh,” Patrick said. “Guess I probably should’ve gone to the mayor first, huh?”

“Honestly, after all the messes I’ve gotten into, I cannot blame you,” Marnie said. “Thank you too, Patrick, for helping to save the day.”

“Anytime,” Patrick said, his eyes flicking over to Pete without his meaning to. Pete shrank under his gaze, but it didn’t seem fearful or angry, just garden-variety nervous.

“We should still get you back to the bus,” Marnie said, not unkindly. “Only one more trip before midnight, and after that-”

“Yeah, I got it,” Patrick said. “Can we have a second?”

Joe waggled his eyebrows at Patrick and Marnie snorted, but nodded. 

“I’ll wait outside,” she said, and with a grand sweep of her robes, she was gone.

Pete sighed.

“She’s a pretty good mayor, I guess,” he said. “But you gotta admit, she’s showy.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” Patrick asked, then made a face. But luckily, Pete didn’t look all that upset. 

“So.” Pete scuffed the toe of his shoe against the ground. “Mortal world. All those music stores back in Shitaco.”

“Chicago,” Patrick said, and smiled. “You remembered.

“Duh,” Pete said. He stepped a little closer, till they were almost chest to chest. “Is this what you wear every day, then?”

“Yeah, I- yeah, this is a lot more normal for me,” Patrick said. “But I love your robes. They suit you.”  
“I think they both suit you,” Pete said. “The robes and the- erm, what do you call this?”

“T-shirt and jeans,” Patrick said. Pete tugged at the hem of Patrick’s shirt.

“Jeans, I like it,” he said. “Really clings to the form.”

“That would be the shirt,” Patrick said, and they both giggled. Pete was blushing, Patrick realized, his golden skin turning pink around the apples of his cheeks. 

“Do you want me to go home?” Patrick asked.

“I- it doesn’t really matter what I want, does it?” Pete asked.

“More than anything, yeah,” Patrick said. Pete shrugged, eyes cast downwards.

“Of course I don’t want you to go, but- Marnie was right. That’s your whole world.”

“I could go back in a year if I don’t like it!” Patrick said. “Or use a portal! They probably aren’t that dangerous!”

“Probably, yeah,” Pete said. “I think that was just an excuse to not have to make portals for you all the time.”

“So, what?” Patrick asked. “We saved the day and this is goodbye?”

“I guess,” Pete said. And, as miserable as the whole thing was, the sudden sense of now or never made Patrick brave.

He leaned forward, pushing himself way too far off balance in his high heeled boots, and kissed Pete, melting against his mouth. Pete’s lips were so soft they might have been made for Patrick’s molding to fit his so perfectly that they were like one person, life and magic flowing between them.

The moment ended too soon, and Patrick brushed a stray piece of hair behind Pete’s ear. 

“I should go,” he said, and Pete nodded mutely.

Patrick didn’t even make it all the way down the hill with Marnie before Pete shouted at them to wait up.

“Patrick!” he said. “Wait, I- I know it’s insane, but stay. Stay here for a year, like you said, and we’ll figure out what this is. What we are.”

Patrick, who had waited all his life for a decent Halloween celebration, for a cute boy who liked him, for a town where he felt at home, and for someone to chase after him like they were characters in a shitty romantic comedy, all but jumped into his arms.

***

There were many little moments of happily ever after later. Pete and Patrick getting their own teeny apartment over a shop downtown. Marnie using the spell Pete invented to separate magic into people rather than families, giving power back to Pete and to her own magic-less witch, Ethan Dalloway. Pete learning how to portal between Halloweentown and Chicago, where Patrick introduced him to his mom.

There was a whole lifetime of happy endings, but none of them felt quite so good as Patrick’s standing among everyone else in the town square that first Halloween, watching the enormous Jack O’Lantern be lit, and feeling more than ever like he belonged.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks all of you for reading this weirdness, and i promise that in regards to peterick i'm back to thwth after this - this dumb little idea just wouldn't leave me alone! I think the ending is a little rushed but tbh i came for halloweentown cuteness, not drama
> 
> happy halloween everyone!


End file.
